


"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

by dullcevita



Category: Ruby Sparks (2012), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ruby Sparks, M/M, harry is trying to be a good sister, john is lonely, sherlock is a character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 00:21:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11196534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dullcevita/pseuds/dullcevita
Summary: John dreams up an interesting, impossible man, a brain in a flurry of dark curls and a dramatic coat, and he writes down their adventures day after day, until he wakes up to find that Sherlock Holmes is alive and living in his flat.





	"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this AU borrows heavily from the film Ruby Sparks. as such, magic realism abounds.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The voice came to John hazily, as if through a deep fog. As he tried to focus in on it, and the figure who had produced it, he found himself drifting further away instead. He strained to hear the next sentence, but it was drowned out by a shrill beeping.

John woke all too quickly, managing to close a hand over the snooze button of his alarm clock before he slumped back down on his bed. It was morning already, and a ray of sunlight was playing across the bed, streaming in through a gap in the curtains. He raised a hand to the light and tried to recall the voice, and the question.

The flat John woke up in was nearly empty, to the point of seeming clinical. What he lacked in material objects he made up for in routine. It was helpful to him, to have a set of things to do every single day. Every day he woke up and put chaos in order, took the same steps, and tried to become more okay with it all. Every day he’d heave a sigh and resolve that tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow he’d do more, step outside the very careful plan he’d made for himself and into his new life, whatever that would be. He’d been looking forwards to Tomorrow for nearly a month now.

Ella was another bit of his routine, to the point where it felt as though they hadn’t been discussing anything new. They were closing in on the end of their session and she moved to her next area of discussion.

“Have you been writing?” She asked, though John already knew what she expected the answer to be.

“No.” He said, as he had before. _Tomorrow_ … He shifted in his chair and went on. “I don’t know what to write about.” Ella changed her position as well, nearly mirroring his. It made him slightly uncomfortable.

“Write about what happens to you, about what you do every day.” She said.

“It wouldn’t make for very good reading. I do the same thing every day.” He replied. She gave a slight tilt of her head and jotted something down. He glanced at her notes but couldn’t make out the most recent scrawl.

“So you’re keeping up with your walks?” She asked. That had been her idea as well as this writing exercise — walks.

“I might quit those, actually. They’re torture on the leg.” John said, and was able to see when she wrote down ‘ _limp still present_ ’. When she looked back up at him she caught him reading her notes and sighed.

“You remember what we said, when we first talked about the walks?” She asked. John sighed.

“We talked about how the exercise would help my mood,” he said, and she waved a hand at him to continue. “and that being out could help me meet people, that I might run into old friends… But any friends I’ve caught up expect me to be the _same_ , and I can’t — I can’t go back to being who I was before…” He trailed off with another sigh. Ella nodded.

“Why don’t you write about that, then?” She asked. “Why don’t you write about someone you meet who doesn’t want you to change, someone who thinks you’re fine, just as you are.”

John pulled a face.

“It’d be awful.” He said.

“I’d love for it to be awful. This doesn’t have to be on your blog, even. This could just be for me.” She said. “Just give it a try, and see what happens.”

And with that, their session was done. Ella gave him a few parting words and wished him good luck, and then John was off. Once he was back at his flat he sat at his desk for a few minutes, just staring at his laptop and the empty word document open on the screen. He remained there for a minute or so longer before heaving a sigh, shutting the laptop, and moving to the kitchen to start dinner.

 

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

John blinked slowly, and found a scene appearing around him. A hospital lab, and a few feet from him, a man. He was tall, and pale, and his attention was on the phone in his hand — John’s phone, he realised after a moment.

“Sorry?” John asked, feeling for all the world like he’d been here before. The man’s attention shifted slightly more to him before returning firmly to the cellphone as he repeated his question.

“Afghanistan,” John said, somewhat dumbfounded. Now he was _sure_ he’d been here before, when was it? “Sorry, how did you…” He trailed off as the man handed him his phone back and strode off to the other end of the lab table they were stood around. Instead of getting a proper answer, he got:

“How do you feel about the violin?”

John glanced around them, trying to garner something, anything, from the environment. He was fairly sure they were in St Barts Hospital, but he didn’t remember how he’d ended up in this strange conversation.

“I’m sorry, what?” He asked, his focus settling back in on the other man.

“I play the violin when I’m thinking — sometimes I don’t talk for days on end, would that bother you?” And with barely a pause: “Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

John’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

“I’m not looking for a flatmate.” He replied. The other man hardly seemed to register this as he went about gathering his coat and scarf from the tables around them.

“Well, I’m sure you could use one, and I _am_ looking. I’d thought I’d have a hard time finding a flatmate, but given that you’re clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan I don’t think you’re likely to be too picky.”

John shifted his stance, resisting the urge to defensively fold his arms across his chest.

“How did you know about Afghanistan?” He asked.

“You saw a nice little place in the paper this morning, you’d be able to afford it with a flatmate.” The other man said, now tying his scarf. “There’s a showing tomorrow evening, seven o’clock. Sorry, gotta dash; I think I’ve left my riding crop in the mortuary.” John’s gaze followed this stranger’s frenetic movements as he headed towards the exit of the lab, his interest quickly being replaced by irritation.

“Is that it? We only just met, and we’re going to go look at a flat?” The man paused his hurried exit to turn back to John, his mouth quirking into a smile. “We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name.” As John finished he watched the smile fade into a cool intensity as the other man replied.

“I know you’re an army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife, and I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic, quite correctly, I’m afraid.”

John was left reeling by this wave of information, and he’d barely even begun to parse it when that energy was back and the other man was heading for the door. Before he’d entirely left he went on:

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

 

John woke with a start, and nearly tripped over himself as he threw his sheets back in his race for his laptop. For the first time, the words came pouring out of him. It was as if he’d been possessed by the energy of the man in his dream as he wrote out that scene, and then many more. After an hour of writing solidly he finally found himself able to detach from his laptop and set about the rest of his day.

While tidying up he found the previous day’s paper, in which there actually _was_ an ad for a showing of a flat at 221B Baker Street. John looked over at the clock on the microwave — just after six. If he showered and got dressed, he could be there in time. It wasn’t until he exited the cab on Baker Street that he even questioned whether or not he _should’ve_ come.

The landlady was at the door and waved him in, introducing herself as Mrs. Hudson. “Come in, come in! You’re the only one so far.” She led him up the stairs and into 221B. “There’s an extra room upstairs, if you’ll be needing an extra room.”

“Not as of yet.” John said absently, looking around the flat. Somehow, it was better than he could’ve imagined. He could see Sherlock here, making wild deductions about people and doing whatever exactly it was that Sherlock did — he still wasn’t sure of that. And somehow, he could see himself here too. Without even meaning to, he found himself telling Mrs. Hudson that he’d take it. _It’s way beyond your budget_ , his rational side yelled, but he wasn’t paying it any attention. Even if it did break the bank, 221B had character, it had personality — it was the opposite of his dreary little flat.

Now knowing what 221B looked like, he had a much better idea of what to write once he got back to that flat. He stayed up nearly half the night with Sherlock as they chased killer cabbies through the streets of London and went for dinner.

As he leaned back from his laptop, looking it all over, it struck him just how isolated he’d become. He longed for the kind of dinners and conversations he’d written, the kind of banter the written version of himself had with Sherlock, and that was not even to mention the curiosity of Sherlock himself.

Despite the fact that John had created him, he knew almost nothing about him. Sherlock would be smarter than John, he was sure of that, and taller, but there wasn’t much else he could definitely say. He was some kind of private detective — he resolved to work out the kinks in that later — but there were few solid details he had about this character to cling to.

 

John wrote solidly through the next week, up until his next session with Ella. She could see the change in him instantly.

“I take it the prompt worked?” She asked, and he couldn’t help but grin at her.

“Worked? That’s an understatement.” He said, and she nodded.

“So tell me about them, then. This person who likes you just as you are.”

“Likes might be too strong of a word…” John said, realising that his interpretation of the prompt might’ve been a little outside of what Ella was looking for. She shrugged, and he went on: “Sherlock Holmes, thirty-three, born in Kensington but raised in St Albans,”

“Why St Albans?”

“I’m not sure… It’s smaller, I suppose. The Holmeses lived in an estate, very nice, a little separated from the rest of the city. He has an older brother, Mycroft, that he doesn’t get along with. Sherlock nearly got kicked out of Cambridge for setting fire to a classroom, or maybe a classmate, I haven’t decided yet…

“Sherlock’s a genius, but only about certain things — he couldn’t tell you who was Prime Minister or what the planets of the solar system are, and he’s hopeless with pop culture. He’s complicated — it’s part of what makes him so interesting.

“He’s not so good with practical life sometimes, he often doesn’t open mail or pay his bills, and he tends not to eat or even sleep if he’s working on a case. His last apartment was shared with a drug dealer, and the one before that was more of a shack than anything else. He can feel a change coming, he’s looking for it…”

“Looking for what?” Ella asked, and John turned it over in his head.

“Something new.”

_Always_. Always, always. That was Sherlock’s way. He sought the new, the exciting, and he dragged John along behind him to find them.

 

In between writing his adventures he moved, and found that almost all of his stuff fit neatly into five boxes. He thought about calling Harry to ask her to help, but decided against it. He and Mrs. Hudson managed just fine, anyways. Despite there only being six boxes, John found himself almost unable to tear himself away from writing to unpack.

He woke one morning to find that his six boxes had somehow become ten.

“Mrs. Hudson?” He called down the stairs, and when he received no reply, let out a sigh and moved them into the downstairs bedroom. He wasn’t sure which bedroom he’d want to use yet, but he’d been staying in the upstairs one for the time being and felt he may as well use the other one for storage. All this meant was that now he had more places in the flat to write.

Another morning he woke to the smell of cigarette smoke, wafting up to the bedroom, but when he came downstairs he found he couldn’t smell it at all anymore. Sniffing around the main floor of the flat got him nowhere, and he shrugged and decided to assume that it was the fireplace. While he was thinking about it he decided to relight the fire, and went about rearranging the kindling.

He was kneeling and building up a pile of kindling when he noticed the violin bow sitting up in the black chair, as if someone had just left it propped there. Once he’d finished making the fire John stood back up stiffly and looked the bow over. He didn’t know much about violins, though he’d done a bit of googling when he’d decided that he should know enough to write about Sherlock’s. Even so, he could tell that this was an expensive bow. With a small sigh he moved it into the other bedroom, only to find that the four boxes he’d put in the room had become eight, and that one had a blue dressing gown draped over it. He tentatively lifted a sleeve of the dressing gown, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. _Odd_.

Coming back out into the main area of the flat he again yelled down the stairs for Mrs. Hudson, and received no reply. With a sigh he left the dressing gown draped over the side of the couch, and went about the rest of his day.

Over the next week he noticed more and more things appearing around the flat. Opening the fridge revealed a jar of some eyeballs John was unhappily able to identify as sheep’s, the same kind often used in classroom dissections. A few days later he found a second razor in the bathroom cabinet, and a dark gray towel on the towel rack. All of John’s towels were white.

 

He woke late a few days later to the ringing of his cell phone from somewhere in the flat. Stumbling down the stairs, still half asleep, he entered the living room to find it was rather a tip. His phone was definitely on the table, though, somewhere under a pile of papers he didn’t remember leaving there. As he went to move them, a deep voice called out to him:

“If you’re going to move them, try not to upset my system.”

“What kind of a system is —” John retorted, before realising fully what had happened. His head whirled around and he found himself staring at a man who could only be Sherlock Holmes, dressed in the blue robe and holding a violin bow in one hand as he paced a small circle between the living room and kitchen. John nearly screamed, but managed to hold it back.

“So, that, that’s your dressing gown.” He said dumbly, and Sherlock looked at him for the first time since John had entered the room.

“Of course. Who else would it belong to?”

Beneath the stack of papers, John’s phone stopped ringing.

John stood, slack-jawed, staring at Sherlock for a few seconds before he found his voice again.

“No, _no_ , you can’t be here.” He said, staring him down. “How are you here?”

Sherlock seemed put off by this.

“I’m only back a day early, I wasn’t expecting you to be this surprised.” He said. “Mycroft’s case was a dud, barely even a three, the fact that he called me out to it at all is an insult.” He’d barely finished before John was grabbing his phone hastily out from under the pile of papers and fleeing up to his bedroom.

With shaking hands he scrolled through his contacts. As he’d said to Ella there were few people he talked to since he’d gotten back, and that was true. There was one person who’d be understanding about a breakdown, but he wasn’t sure… _Oh, to hell with it_.

Harry answered on the fourth ring.

“Remember how you used to say I had no imagination? I think you’re wrong.” He began, and Harry heaved out a sigh.

“What’s this about then, John?”

“My therapist gave me a writing assignment, to write about someone, and he’s come to life. Or at least, I’m seeing him.” John hissed out under his breath.

“Are you having a total breakdown?” Harry asked.

“Maybe. No, I don’t know.” John replied.

Harry heaved a sigh.

“Just get out of the house, John. Go for a walk. Meet up with a friend, someone who can’t see your imaginary friend.” Harry suggested, and John found himself nodding before he thanked Harry and hung up. A friend, a friend… Flipping through his cell phone contacts he came across a few possibilities, and then he heard someone entering the flat downstairs.

“John? Are you in?” Mrs. Hudson called out. Mrs. Hudson! John yanked the door open and took the stairs two at a time in his rush to greet her. She let out a small laugh at the sight of him. “John Watson, you gave me a fright, running down the stairs like that. What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing, nothing at all — where have you been?” He asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice.

“I was on a cruise, actually, with this nice fellow from ‘round the corner.” She looked as though she was about to go on when John interrupted.

“That sounds lovely — would you like to come in for a cuppa?” He asked, and she smiled brightly.

“How thoughtful, John, I’d love to!” She said, and they entered the flat. Sherlock was gone, vanished, John hoped, but the flat was still a tip.

“Oh, the state of it!” Mrs. Hudson exclaimed with a sigh. “Really, I leave for a week and you can’t manage to keep it tidy. I’m your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper.” John nodded absently as he led her to the kitchen table, where he motioned for her to take a seat while he made the tea.

Mrs. Hudson chattered on about the cruise and the man she’d been on it with, and continued doing so as Sherlock strode back into the kitchen. John bit back a sigh — she hadn’t seemed to react to him at all. He really must’ve lost it.

“Oh, good, you’re making tea.” Sherlock said. He was more properly dressed now, though the dressing gown was still draped around him. John didn’t reply and kept his gaze resolutely forward, though out of the corner of his eye he could see Sherlock turn his attention to Mrs. Hudson.

“You really should break it off with Mr. Turner.” Sherlock said. And then, the most remarkable thing happened: Mrs. Hudson replied.

“What’s that?” She asked.

“He’s married, and very unlikely to leave his wife. Why else do you think he’d invite you on a cruise when you began getting serious? He does like you, I’ll give you that, but unless you’d like to remain the Other Woman I’d suggest you break it off.” Sherlock tilted his head, as though listening for some secret intel that no one else could hear. “Perhaps wait a week or so, he’s going to offer to take you away on a minibreak sometime soon.”

Mrs. Hudson looked scandalised, and then a bit grim. “Well, I suppose I should’ve expected it.” She said with a sigh. “Thank you, dear, though next time perhaps let me know before I’ve been dating him for half a year.”

“Would that I could, Mrs. Hudson, but I’ve been rather busy as of late.” He replied, moving now over to John. “The kettle’s boiled, John. Are you alright?”

Sherlock reached out a hand to grab John’s wrist, causing John to start as he _felt_ Sherlock’s hand touch him.

“Elevated pulse, dilated pupils, frantic energy — if I didn’t know you better I’d say you were high.” Sherlock concluded, his brow furrowing. John shook his head stiffly.

“Not high.” He managed to croak out.

Sherlock made a noise of disbelief but moved away from John and into the center of the flat, apparently looking for something.

“You should’ve told me you were getting a flatmate in,” Mrs. Hudson said, looking over at John. “Though it seems like you and Sherlock are getting on fine.”

“He introduced himself to you?” John asked, still somewhat in shock. She nodded easily.

“A day and a half ago he said he’d moved in fully, but that he had to go back out on business. Such an interesting young man, though the things he says sometimes…” She shook her head. “I think you’ll make a good pair.”

John nodded weakly. “A good pair.” He repeated, still watching Sherlock as he reached around under the couch until he seemed to grasp what he’d been looking for. Sherlock pulled out the remains of a phone, the back popped clean off and a huge crack running through the screen. He sighed, and walked back towards John and Mrs. Hudson.

“I need your phone.” He said to John, who numbly nodded and reached into his pocket to hand it over. “I seem to have broken mine at some point last night.” With John’s in hand he shot off a quick text before handing it back. John checked the message. He didn’t know the number, but the message read ‘If brother owns green ladder arrest brother. - SH’.

Mrs. Hudson said her goodbyes and went off, and John sat down at the table and stared out into the living room. Sherlock was touching things, moving things. When he walked by a pile of papers they rustled, when he stepped on a warped floorboard it creaked, and he’d sent an actual text from John’s actual phone.

“Sherlock,” John said tentatively. His voice was too high, and though he cleared his throat he was sure Sherlock had noticed. Of course he had. But, John had his attention, at least. “how did we meet?”

“I’m not sure why — ”

“Just, please. How did we meet?”

Sherlock sighed.

“You went to meet Mike Stamford at Barts, and found me instead. I said I was looking for a flatmate, and you said you had a flat.” Sherlock said, then narrowed his eyes as he examined John. Seemingly unable to find any proof of whatever he was looking for ( _signs of drug use,_ John thought) he moved on and returned to pacing the flat.

_What would written John have done?_

“Do you have… a case?” John asked. “Anything from the Yard?”

It seemed to be the right thing, in any case, as Sherlock stopped glancing over at John and instead sighed melodramatically.

“I think Lestrade is being deliberately obtuse — quite a feat, given how often he ends up that way naturally.” Sherlock said. _Lestrade_. John hadn’t yet given a name to any of the policemen in his stories. Mostly he’d just written about him and Sherlock, and though he’d known he was going to have to given a name to the detectives that Sherlock regularly managed to piss off, he hadn’t chosen what those names would be yet. Lestrade seemed as good as any, and that sparked another train of questioning. Was Lestrade real? Had John accidentally invented him as well in trying to flesh out Sherlock’s life? Did _Mycroft_ really exist?

“I could try talking to him, if you wanted.” John said, and Sherlock paused in his pacing for a half-moment, before resuming it immediately as he waved off the suggestion.

“No, no, he’s barely happy to have to consult me.” Sherlock came to a complete halt as he realised something. “Anything back from him?”

John looked down at his phone.

“That was who you texted?” He asked, and Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Yes, do try to keep up. Anything?”

John checked.

“Just a ‘thanks’, and then a smiling face emoticon.” John said. Sherlock grunted in frustration and stalked across the living room to fling himself face first onto the couch, where he stilled and curled up on his side. John waited for a minute or so to see if Sherlock would spring back into action, but he seemed to have lulled himself into a sort of angry trance.

“Right, then, I’m just going to pop out.” He said, moving backwards from the living room into the landing. Sherlock remained silent. John grabbed his jacket from the coat rack and took the stairs as quickly as he could without sprinting.

 

How he ended up at a pub a block from Harry’s flat was a mystery to him as well as to her, but she agreed to meet him. John ordered a glass of water with his food, and Harry followed suit. John tried not to make any sort of relieved face at her, but apparently failed. She sighed, and picked at the basket of nachos between them, waiting for him to start. When he failed to, she took a gulp of her water and stared him down.

“You haven’t talked to me since you got home, and today you call me out of the blue saying you’re hallucinating.” She said, then looked him over. “What’s going on?”

John explained the writing prompt before handing over his phone, open to the Google Doc where he’d been storing the story. Harry’s eyes went wide as she looked at the document.

“Christ, John, this thing is a hundred pages long.” She said.

“It’s barely eighty pages.” He corrected, then pointed at the phone. “You can read it, if you like.”

John sat and slowly ate nachos while Harry read through the first bit of the story. After about ten minutes she looked up at him, almost sadly.

“You should’ve called me.” She said, and John’s face must’ve shown his confusion as she went on: “Your therapist told you to write about someone who would like you and you chose to write about this… sociopath.”

“He isn’t, actually, he just says it as a kind of defence mechanism,” John said, then shook his head. “never mind. The problem isn’t the character. It’s that he’s _real_ now.” Harry raised an eyebrow.

“Real?” She asked. He nodded.

“Real, physically real. He texted from my phone, he talks to my landlady, to the _police_.” John said. “He’s a real person.” Harry was shaking her head.

“That’s impossible. You can’t just make a person from nothing, that’s — physics, or metaphysics, whatever.” She waved it off. “Sherlock can’t be in your flat because _Sherlock Holmes isn’t real_. This shows when you started working on this — you made him up.”

“I know I made him up!” John said, growing frustrated. He lowered his tone, and let out a breath. “That doesn’t make him any less real right now.”

 

John pushed open the door to the flat tentatively, looking around for Sherlock. Harry nudged him with a finger, and John turned to whisper to her.

“He doesn’t know that I wrote him, so don’t say anything about the writing project, okay?” John said. Harry gave the sigh of a long-suffering sibling, and John felt the bizarreness of their role reversal in that moment.

“Okay.” She said, following him into the living room of the flat. She gave a cursory glance around the room.

“Hi Sherlock, great to meet you — can we call your therapist now?” Before John even had time to shoot her an annoyed look, Sherlock appeared from the kitchen, a blowtorch in one hand and a charred bit of bone in the other.

“Anything from Lestrade?” He asked, and then seemed to notice Harry. “Same jawline, flushed face, slight tremor in your hands — you must be Harry Watson.” He gave her another glance over, then turned to John. “You should be proud of your sister; she’s been sober for most of a month now.”

John looked back at Harry, who was staring at Sherlock, her mouth agape.

“You must be…” Her voice seemed to catch in her throat. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock, to his credit, set the blowtorch and the bone down on a side-table and moved forwards to shake her hand. Once he’d let go he turned back to John, who fumbled in his pockets for his phone. He hastily closed the Google Doc he’d shown to Harry in the pub and pulled up his messages, which included one for Sherlock.

“He says that he’s got one involving an heiress and her missing father.” John said, handing his phone over to Sherlock, who studied the message, then handed the phone back.

“No. The carefulness of his word-choice means he went digging for this, and there’s nothing much to it.” Sherlock grabbed the bone and blowtorch and returned to the kitchen.

“I’ll tell him no from you, then.” John called after him, already beginning the text. When he looked back up Harry was staring at him and jerking her head towards the door, so he led her up to his bedroom.

“How much did he cost?” She asked once the door was closed. “He is an actor, isn’t he? It’s convincing, the deduction thing, but you must’ve told him that stuff about me.”

“Harry, I didn’t even _know_ you’d been sober for that long.” John said, and then: “Which is wonderful, by the way.”

“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you, and… him.” She waved a hand back towards the stairs. “People don’t appear out of thin air.”

“He did!” John said.

“How?”

John threw a hand up.

“I don’t know how! It’s a miracle, it’s magic — do you remember what you told me when you met Clara?”

Harry’s face pulled into a pained expression.

“I certainly didn’t pretend I invented her.” She replied cooly.

“You said that she was your dream girl. This is… something like that!” John said. Harry sighed, dropping her face into her hands.

“Has it occured to you that he might be an imposter? That someone’s hacked your account and seen the Google Doc? This could be a shakedown, this could be some kind of blackmail.” Harry said.

“You and Ella are the only people who I’ve even talked to about Sherlock, so unless she’s pulling something on me, then there’s no one else who would’ve seen it.” John said. Harry took a step back, holding her hands up. She seemed to be thinking it over.

“Okay.” She said. “Let’s say you created this person. Everything you wrote about him came true?” John nodded. “Even the smallest things?”

“Everything. Even things I don’t know. I wrote that he was smarter than me, and he is, that he knows how to work as a detective, and he does. He’s exactly as I wrote him to be.” John replied.

“Have you tried writing more?” Harry asked.

“No. It’s just been the one day, though, and I don’t know if — ”

Harry cut him off.

“Write something else.” She said. “Write something, and if it comes true then you’re right and this is a _bloody_ miracle. And if not… maybe we think about calling the police.”

Her logic seemed sound to him, and everything he’d written about Sherlock had come true. With a sigh he moved to his desk and opened his laptop up.

“It’d have to be something obvious, something we’d notice right away.” Harry said, and John thought it over. What could he change, then change back. Something that wouldn’t be too disruptive, but would be immediately noticeable. _Ah-ha_.

Just beyond the last paragraph he’d typed out he wrote ‘ _Sherlock spoke with an American accent. He had no perception that his accent was different to that of the people around him_ ’. As he finished, hitting the period button with a kind of finality, they heard a loud crash from downstairs. John and Harry shared a look, and both went running down the stairs to see what had happened.

“Are you all right?” John asked as they rounded the corner to the kitchen, finding Sherlock seemingly unharmed — though his jacket couldn’t say the same thing.

“Fine. I caught myself on fire, but I’ve put it out now.” He replied, brushing soot and singed fabric scraps from his arm. John turned around to stare at Harry, who was smiling a bit hysterically. Sherlock was speaking with an entirely American accent. As he explained more of what he’d been attempting versus what had actually ended up happening, John found himself staring. Sherlock’s voice was a bit more gravelly now, and John wasn’t able to place the accent — maybe something New York adjacent? — but it was certainly American.

“I’ve just got to run up and grab something from my room.” John said, running back up the stairs to delete the last sentence he’d written. When he got back, Sherlock had moved on to analysing Harry’s complete dumbfoundedness — in his regular English accent.

“I’d say that your sister looks like she needs a drink, were that not a hideous bit of cliché, as well as poor advice for a recently recovered alcoholic.” Sherlock said, and then, a moment later: “We should get dinner.”

 

The restaurant John had written about in the first story turned out to be called Angelo’s, and just like in the story, the owner knew Sherlock. Thanked him, even, and then gave him an awkward one-armed hug that caused Harry to let out a burst of hysterical laughter before she caught herself. Angelo seated them near the window, added a candle ‘to make it more romantic’, and handed them menus.

Sherlock didn’t want anything to eat, despite having suggested the meal, and Harry was too shocked to do much more than gawp at Sherlock. In the end, John was the only one eating.

“So, Sherlock, John says you’re from St Albans? Do your family still live there?” Harry asked. John forced himself to keep chewing his mouthful of pasta, though he gave her a nervous side-glance.

Sherlock looked almost disinterested as he replied, his gaze out the window and seemingly on something far away.

“My parents are. My brother lives in London, sometimes, when he can be bothered to be in the country.” 

“Your parents, are they also like you?” Harry asked. This seemed to at least draw Sherlock’s attention back to the table.

“In what way?” He replied.

“Geniuses, or whatever you are.” She said.

This was something John hadn’t written, anywhere. There hadn’t been much written backstory for Sherlock in general, aside of that his parents were still alive in a quaint house out in St Albans, that Mycroft worked, in some vague way, for the British government, and that Sherlock had suffered a great deal at the loss of his childhood playmate, a dog named Redbeard.

“I wouldn’t say so.” Sherlock replied, nearly sniffing at the idea. “They’re quite… average.”

Harry looked to John for confirmation on this part, and John shrugged. It could be so, but he’d yet to write it out. In fact, he hadn’t really planned to write it out. Parental backstory wasn’t needed all that much for the kind of story he’d been writing.

“I don’t know if you could call them average. Someone’d have to do something pretty incredible to produce you.” Harry said, and John nearly choked on his pasta as she shot him a knowing glance.

Before John had a chance to try to reign the conversation back in, Sherlock stood abruptly and looked to John and Harry.

“Observe, don’t interfere.” He said, before rushing out the front door and taking off at a good clip down the street. Harry looked to John, who shrugged.

 

“That was insane!” Harry yelled, causing more than a few passersby to turn and stare at them. John shushed Harry, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Harry—”

The pair were walking back to John’s flat, and taking the walk at an easy pace for John’s leg.

“This is insane.” Harry repeated, though at a more respectable volume. She was so absorbed in the conversation that John kept having to steer her out of the way of obstacles on the sidewalk.

“You manifested a man with your _mind_.” She went on. “Your therapist’s going to freak out.” John grabbed hold of Harry’s arm, stopping her.

“Harry, I can’t tell her. _You_ can’t tell her — you can’t tell anyone.” He said, lowering his voice. “They’ll think he’s a freak.” Harry’s eyebrows went up. “I mean, more than people already do.”

They started walking again.

“So, so what, John? We’re just going to pretend that he’s your flatmate?” She asked.

“He _is_ my flatmate.”

The eyebrows went up again as Harry caught John’s eye.

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

“Your flatmate?”

“Stranger things have happened.” John said, though even he didn’t believe it. Harry could tell.

“No, I don’t think so.” She said. “I think this is the strangest thing to happen, possibly ever.”

John fell silent at that, and they walked the rest of the way back to the flat without speaking. Upon entering, they found that Sherlock was still out. Harry sat down on the couch, pushing Sherlock’s dressing gown aside. John sat in his chair, facing her.

“So…” Harry said, after a moment of playing with the hem of the dressing gown. “You can change him, make him however you like?”

“I suppose so?” John replied. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

Harry shot him a look.

“Really? You could make him however you want, and you haven’t once thought about changing him?”

“Changing him how?”

“I don’t know, make him tidier, more normal, nicer — whatever.”

“I don’t mind his personality.” John replied, all too quickly.

Harry sighed, leaning back further in the couch.

“You know how many times I wanted a button to make Clara stop doing all the annoying little things she would do?” She asked. “I bet she’d have wished for the same thing with me, and maybe we’d have been better off for it. I mean, John, you could craft whatever kind of person you want. A best friend, hell, a _boyfriend_ , whatever.”

John held up his hands.

“He’s only been... _alive_ for a few days, and I’m not even interested in him.” He said. At least, he hadn’t considered it. Writing himself a boyfriend would have seemed far too desperate, even for him, and now everything was so muddled… He really hadn’t been given any decent amount of time to think over anything.

“People are mysterious creatures, John.” Harry said. “Sherlock seems to be especially so. Are you saying that this gift, this miracle, you’re just going to _waste_ it?”

John sighed deeply, standing from his chair.

“I’m never going to write about him again.” He said. Harry seemed about to say something else, but thought better of it. She hauled herself up off of the couch, gave John a hug, and told him to give her a call if anything else happened. He promised he would.

 

John had just finished downloading a copy of the story to a usb drive when he heard the door to the flat bang open. Quickly he deleted the file from his Google Docs, chucked the flash drive into his desk drawer, and came downstairs. Sherlock was sitting in his chair, and aside of the mussed hair and flushed cheeks, he looked as though he could’ve been sitting uninterrupted for hours.

“Was that for a case?” John asked, sitting in the chair opposite Sherlock’s.

“Hmm.” Was all the reply John got, and after a few minutes of sitting, he realised Sherlock was unlikely to say much more. He stood stiffly from the chair, and headed off towards the stairs up to his room.

“What did Harry think?” Sherlock called after him, surprising him utterly. John paused and turned to him, thinking of how to sum it up.

“She thought you were _very_ interesting.” He said finally.

“I was asking what she thought of the restaurant. Angelo asked.” Sherlock said.

“Oh.” John replied, and then, when he could think of nothing else: “Well, goodnight.”

Sherlock hummed out another noise of response, and John headed up the stairs to his bedroom.


End file.
